


The Fool on the Hill

by debwalsh



Series: Take Up Your Shield and Follow Me [12]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: #savebuckybarnes, Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Past Torture, Senate Testimony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 19:09:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1994505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debwalsh/pseuds/debwalsh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>– Maria Hill testifies before the Senate Subcommittee looking into the fall of SHIELD.  She takes on the thorny issue of the Winter Soldier, igniting a firestorm of public opinion and a social media frenzy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Fool on the Hill

**Author's Note:**

> I've been chipping away at this for some time, ever since a friend noted in one of her recs that she liked the fact that a particular story addressed Bucky's future in terms of any prosecution from his years as the Winter Soldier. I'm still not 100% happy with everything, and may come back and make some minor edits, but here is my take on how the Avengers - and especially Tony Stark - would address Bucky's future.

“Ms. Hill, can you please explain why the Winter Soldier has not been turned over to US intelligence custody?”

“Sir, the Winter Soldier was a code name for a Hydra-Soviet project.  Sargent James B. Barnes is a decorated war hero.  And considering the current state of US intelligence, it’s my considered opinion that he is safer in our custody than in the custody of _any_ US intelligence agency.”

“Ms. Hill, you are aware that with the criminalization of SHIELD, you have no authority here.”

“I have authority to speak on behalf of Sargent James B. Barnes’ medical power of attorney, sir.”

“Medical power of attorney?”

“Captain Steven Grant Rogers, sir.”

“Captain America,” the Senator added.

“In this capacity, Captain Rogers is acting as a private citizen.  Sir.  Sargent James B. Barnes is Captain Rogers’ best friend, an American citizen born in 1917.  He also served as Captain America’s second in command during World War II, in the elite fighting unit known as the Howling Commandos.”

“This is public record, Ms. Hill.  I’m aware of Mr. Barnes’s colorful war record.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And what does that have to do with the inquiry at hand?”

“Everything, sir.  Sargent James B. Barnes is an American veteran, a Purple Heart recipient, a posthumous recipient of the Medal of Valor, with multiple decorations for valor, marksmanship, and courage under fire.  He served with distinction up until the time of what we now know was his capture.  What the American public and Captain Rogers believed to be his death.  Sir.”

“I’m aware of Sargent Barnes’s record,” the senator replied snappishly.  “I’ve been to the Smithsonian exhibit.  Everyone in Washington has at this point.”

“Yes, sir, it’s a go-to destination for out of town tourists as well.  But, sir, you _aren’t_ familiar with the extent of the, um, the treatment Sargent Barnes has endured.  For _seventy years_ , sir.  That has not been public record.”

“Well, I –“

“Let me show you.  If I may?” she asked, holding up a thumb drive.  The senator nodded, and the clerk came over to take the drive from Maria.  There was rustling in the chamber as the technology was sorted out, and the files opened on the drive to display.  Lights were dimmed in the chamber and a screen extruded from the ceiling.  Everyone on the dais swiveled in their seats to look up.

The video was a collection of clips stitched together from the extensive video footage Hydra had accumulated on their “Winter Soldier” project.  The first clip was in glorious and blessedly silent black and white, but the monochromatic palette did not hide the horror of Barnes’s mangled arm being sheared off as he watched, screaming.  Nor did it flinch from the crude – by today’s standards – medical procedures performed to anchor the prosthetic arm to his skeleton, flesh peeled back from the shoulder joint like the skin of an orange, connective wiring snaked through the meat of his shoulder and into holes drilled directly into his skull while Barnes was obviously awake and aware.  

And when it got to the repeated electroshock therapy, several times when parts of Barnes’s skull were removed and the leads affixed directly onto brain tissue, the images were all too vivid.

Maria could feel the revulsion spiraling through the room, the senate chamber where she presented her evidence.  If they thought this was bad, wait until they got to the more modern footage – that was all in living color, complete with sound …

The documentation of 70 years of torture, degradation, and dehumanization continued for nearly half an hour.  The recurrent image of James B. Barnes receiving electroshock therapy, surrounded by dispassionate white-coated men and women in increasingly current dress and hairstyles underscored the horrific scope of the torture.  Not a one lifted a finger in anything remotely considered compassionate care; not a one did anything so much as touch their subject except to inflict pain.  

As the last frames faded from the screen, Maria said quietly, “This footage was culled from literally thousands of hours of video files extracted from Hydra servers.  I wish I could say this is the worst of it, but it’s not.  The team that assembled this footage is undergoing intensive therapy, and more than one has attempted suicide after viewing the entire film and video record. There is no way any human being could have withstood this treatment without breaking, Senator.  The human mind and body simply aren’t built that way.”

Now the senator’s complexion had turned decidedly greener.  Not Hulk-green, but puke-green.  Maria felt a stab of satisfaction over the roiling of her stomach.  She’d seen the footage more than once preparing for this appearance before the committee, and it never ceased to anger and sicken her.

“Any questions?” she said softly into the microphone.

“Will he recover?” the senator asked in a broken voice.

“We hope.  The brain damage was extensive.  The repeated electroshock therapy and cryogenic freezing left his brain with considerable scar tissue.  There is a team working with him every day, therapists, specialists, Captain Rogers.  Literally all of the Avengers.  He has been as cooperative as he’s able in identifying Hydra bases and operatives, but Sargent Barnes is unable to speak, and has so far shown no ability to comprehend speech or the written word.  But he responds to visual stimulus.”

“I see.  Is there any way to tell when all of this started?”

“There is the fact of the prosthetic arm.  It was designed by Howard Stark, and based on his notes, the prototype was fabricated in 1944, during the war.  It had been designed to be a prosthetic for soldiers returning home missing limbs, but the supporting technologies to safely mount it on a human body had yet to be developed.  It was in Scientific Strategic Reserve custody for at least a year, after that, the chain of custody appears to have been breached.  Based on the timestamps, in early 1946 Sargent James B. Barnes was forcibly grafted to the prosthetic, sir.  Invasive brain surgery and skeletal augmentation were necessary to connect the arm, to make it functional, but the proper techniques wouldn’t be developed until, well, now, sir.  And the surgery was conducted without anesthetic, while Sargent James B. Barnes was fully conscious.”

The green pallor of the committee members seemed to deepen.  Maria flicked her eyes left, then right, taking in each face in turn.  

“You are aware, sir, that this,” she pursed her lips tightly, trying to get the words out, “this _treatment_ was not the first experimentation on Sargent Barnes by Hydra.  He had already been tortured and experimented on when Captain Rogers liberated the Hydra base in Italy in 1943.  He was taken again in 1945 when he was presumed dead.  Our experts posit that he survived the fall due to Hydra’s experimentation, and the long periods of cryogenic suspension.  I should point out to you that cryogenic suspension of human subjects has not been successfully attempted in the modern era.  So again, this storage technique was a form of abuse.  

“Sargent James B. Barnes has been an undocumented prisoner of war for more than 70 years, sir.  He is the longest continually held prisoner of war, and his country has failed him spectacularly.  The Geneva Convention was not only noticeably absent in his treatment as a POW, he was never accorded the same rights required for any research subject under FDA regs, good clinical practice, ICH guidelines, or any national or local ethics body.”

“I see.”

“Do you, Senator?  Crimes have been committed against Sargent James B. Barnes.”

“Ms. Hill –“

“You see the difficulty, Senator?  Sargent James B. Barnes was tortured, wiped, and forced to commit heinous acts against his will, and under the control of Hydra.  His physical form was forcibly augmented and used as a weapon.  He had no part in that.”

“Ms. Hill, we cannot simply turn a blind eye –“

“I’m not asking you to.  Barnes isn’t at fault.  Hydra is.  Approve funding to support a strike team to go after the true perpetrators here – _Hydra_.  And there is the not so small matter of back pay.  Sargent Barnes was a serving member of the US Army at the time of his capture.”

***

The media went into overdrive after Maria Hill’s testimony before the Senate subcommittee.  The testimony itself had aired live on C-SPAN2, but within minutes, every major news outlet had picked up the feed.  The hook of Captain America’s boyhood friend a) being alive, and b) being a prisoner of war for 70 years was just too tantalizing for the pundits and the talking heads to ignore.  

The morality of torture in wartime was debated endlessly in the next few days, experts and self-appointed gurus on the subject raking in cash to make the circuit of talk shows, roundtables, and call-in programs.  Sirius XM spun off a channel specific to the Captain America/Winter Soldier debate.  The gray area of bad acts under duress and who’s really responsible ignited a firestorm, with the ACLU coming out in defense of the Winter Soldier, and memberships in the organization blossomed exponentially.  Fox News was crippled by the fact that Barnes was a decorated war hero and also the Winter Soldier.  They ended up spinning the news to make it sound like Captain America himself was a Commie plot, but that didn’t gain any traction with the public.  Finally, they fell silent, and advertisers inched quietly away.

The blogosphere nearly imploded with opinion.  The Drudge Report was adamant about crime and punishment, calling for incarceration.  Right-wing groups in Texas called for execution, and one penitentiary offered to both take on the Winter Soldier, and officiate at his electrocution.  When reminded that he had already undergone electrocution at least 15 times documented in the video shown to the Senate subcommittee alone, the taste for fried brains subsided.  
  


Huffpost reminded the public about Barnes’s military record, his dedication to Captain America, and his lengthy incarceration at the hands of a documented terrorist organization.  Just Jared posted pictures of Bucky from back in the day, playing him up as a bad boy with a heart of gold.  New memes with Bucky’s face started circulating on the internet, and Facebook quickly had a number of fan pages active.

The countermovement started on Tumblr and Facebook and Vine.  Pinterest saw its own share of activity, as did Pinboard and Instagram.  Twitter began trending within minutes of the first appearance of the hashtag.

#savebuckybarnes

And

#wintercomehome

And

#captainwinter

Some hashtags weren’t quite so family friendly, but that didn’t stop their users from trying to spike them up to fully trending.

And through it all, Steve Rogers, Captain America, remained silent.  As did Sargent James B. Barnes.  Maria Hill remained their spokesperson, handling the press and the questions and the harangues with her normal grace and poise.  In other words, she found herself banned from 30 Rock after punching out a particularly vile Conservative pundit who’d booked the _Today Show_ the same day as she did.  And she didn’t regret a thing, especially when that incident led to a full hour _20/20_ with Diane Sawyer.  If she were asked for her favorite moment in the press tour, she’d admit to taking on Bill Maher.  _The Real Time_ roundtable had been loud, opinionated, and passionate.  And for Maria, it had been a hoot even as she’d felt the groundswell of support for Barnes continue to build.

So Captain America was unavailable for comment, dealing with the tragic return of his best friend, and the toll Barnes’s past experience and current therapy was taking on the man closest to him.  

The fact was, Steve and Bucky weren’t even aware of the full scope of the debate, only the reports that Maria provided from time to time.  Bucky’s comprehension was still compromised, so he didn’t get what Maria was saying anyway.   And Steve was happy to let Maria handle the media and political backlash.  Bruce Banner watched their disconnection from the public discourse with a smile – he’d counseled against public exposure, and miraculously, Stark had acquiesced, simply allowing Hill to take point.  So while the world raged around them and about them, the two boys from Brooklyn simply continued to make progress toward healing the wounds that had amassed for more than 70 years.

Steve did, however, send out a single tweet on his official Twitter account.  Surprisingly, the suggestion came from Natasha Romanoff, who simply said it would be nice if Steve acknowledged all the support Bucky was receiving from total strangers.

**Tweets                 Followers            Following**

1                              2.7M                      1

**Steve Rogers (verified) @realcaptainamerica**

hi guys! Buck & I wanted to thank everyone for your incredible support! You have no idea how much it means to us that you to have our backs!

The single tweet was retweeted so frequently and so widely, the Twitter servers seized up and spasmed and simply shut down.  Not since the Ellen DeGeneres Oscar selfie had a single tweet caused so much activity on the internet, and Twitter was unprepared for the unprecedented server load.  Steve had effectively broken the internet with 140 characters.

When the temperature of public sentiment could be measured to be vastly in favor of pardoning Bucky – and some campaigns were fighting for a second Medal of Honor, a brand-new state-of-the-art prosthetic ward in the VA named after Bucky, even renaming Central Park Barnes Park (that one died a quick death) and re-christening the Brooklyn Bridge to Rogers-Barnes Bridge (again, a spectacular fail) – Tony Stark finally took action.

With a voice command to Jarvis to dial one of his key speed-dial numbers, Tony started off with, “Yo, Mr. President.”

***

President Matthew Ellis returned the handset to its cradle and leant back in his chair thoughtfully.  His eyes tracked slowly around the Oval Office, searching for a fixed point on which to hang his calm.

Tony Fucking Stark.  Brash and brave and impossibly rich, with a chip on his shoulder the size of Alaska.  Well, maybe the entire contiguous 48.  If not bigger.

He owed him and Colonel Rhodes his life.  Truth be told, he owed them both a great deal more.  Thanks to their intervention, the entire country had not been tipped into war at the design of AIM.  The entire world actually owed them both a debt of gratitude.

So, when Tony Fucking Stark called him personally to ask him for a favor, he was inclined to acquiesce.  

Problem was, he was the Fucking President of the United States, elected by the people to uphold the Constitution and to serve the people’s will.  He couldn’t be seen to simply … well, do Fucking Tony Stark’s bidding.

The outing of the Winter Soldier had dredged up a lot of ghosts in the intelligence community, and in various corners of his own government.  More so even than the appearance of Hydra in the wake of the SHIELD scandal.  He had to wonder just how clean hands were in this situation, and the thought that any US president, any servant of the people of the United States, had somehow been complicit in Barnes’s torture and captivity … not for the first time since this whole thing started, Matt Ellis bit back bile.  There were days when he’d like nothing better than to ditch the whole President of the United States gig and just go fishing.  Like that was going to happen.  

There were a lot of people in Washington, and in capitals across the globe, who were looking over their shoulders these days.  There were a lot of skittish people with access to some seriously scary arsenals, or data so sensitive, it could quite literally set the world on fire.

However, public sentiment had already swelled around Barnes.  Fact was, he was a decorated war hero, and Hill’s testimony wasn’t false – his own people had verified the recordings, and had provided a pretty clear, if graphic, analysis of the data surrounding the man’s captivity.  He didn’t disagree with Hill’s assessment that his country had failed him, even if there was no reasonable expectation the man could have survived that fall.

As President, Ellis had the ability to issue a full pardon.  He could issue an executive order requiring that intelligence and law enforcement stand down from any prosecution of James Buchanan Barnes.  He could.

But that’s not all Tony Fucking Stark had requested.  He’d asked for the same consideration for Natasha Romanoff, a known Soviet assassin who’d assisted in bringing down Hydra in the corpse of SHIELD.  That wasn’t going to be a popular action.

But Tony Fucking Stark had promised he had video evidence demonstrating that Ms. Romanoff had received treatment not dissimilar to Barnes.  No surgery or body augmentation, but clearly torture and indoctrination.  Starting when she was barely out of diapers.

He did not want to see this evidence.  Just the high level briefing on Barnes was enough to destroy his dreams for months to come.  He couldn’t watch a _child_ undergo brainwashing, even in the interest of justice …

Romanoff broke her programming years earlier, but it clearly framed her worldview and impacted her life choices.  He couldn’t agree they were always the right ones – the evidence she herself had leaked to the internet revealed that.

And yet she had risked her life on behalf of her adopted country more than once, including assisting in bringing down the SHIELD/Hydra helicarriers before they carried out their programming and eliminated literally millions of people, himself included.

Sometimes, as President of the United States, he suffered from having access to too much information.  Information, not wisdom.  Information, not knowledge.  

He had a choice to make.  And an obligation to make it.

***

“… President Matthew Ellis today issued two Presidential Policy Directives, effectively ending the questions regarding prosecution of Sargent James B. Barnes, aka the ‘Winter Soldier,’ and Natasha Romanoff, aka the Black Widow and recently an operative for the disgraced global security agency, SHIELD.  In these directives, with the full support of both the National Security Council and the Department of Justice, President Ellis has effectively pardoned both Sargent Barnes and Ms. Romanoff of any wrong-doing relating to either Sargent Barnes’s forced affiliation with Hydra and other anti-American organizations, and Ms. Romanoff’s affiliation with the KGB, Red Room, and SHIELD.  

“The Directive effectively puts a halt to any disciplinary or criminal proceeding related to Sargent Barnes or Ms. Romanoff.  For all intents and purposes, it wipes the slate clean.  It does not, however, pardon any future actions, but if Sargent Barnes and Ms. Romanoff keep their noses clean going forward, they could just get off scot free for any past crimes.

“The move is not without controversy, with many on the Hill claiming that President Ellis has bowed to outside influence.  Conservative news outlets and commentators are split on whether this is a bad thing or a good thing, at least relating to Sargent Barnes.  

“The ACLU has issued a statement thanking the President for his deft handling of the situation, in that the Directives do not require any formal acceptance or admission of guilt in order to be effective.

“The latest NBC-Gallup poll shows that 88 per cent of Americans support clemency for Sargent Barnes, while a significantly lower percentage of 53 per cent support clemency for Ms. Romanoff.  Neither could be reached for comment, but a press release applauding the President’s action has just been released by billionaire philanthropist Tony Stark, also known as Iron Man and a member of the Avengers with Ms. Romanoff and Sargent Barnes’s lifelong friend, Captain America.

“Analysts predict a bump in President Ellis’s approval rating, while social media has gone insane in celebrating the culmination of the savebuckybarnes movement.

“No word yet on whether other countries potentially impacted by either the Winter Soldier or the Black Widow will follow President Ellis’s lead, or the pair are facing further legal challenges in other national jurisdictions.

“For more on this breaking story, tune in tonight for our special report, ‘Winter is Here’.”

***

Quietly, President Ellis also directed the Veterans Administration to collaborate with the team from Stark Industries to begin planning for the James B. Barnes Center for Prosthetic Research, an initiative funded almost entirely by Stark Industries.  

And Steve Rogers again brought down the internet following his second tweet.

**Tweets                 Followers            Following**

2                              10.2M                   1

**Steve Rogers (verified) @realcaptainamerica**

Feeling proud to be American! Thank you to President Ellis & everyone who made this happen! Bucky, Nat & I are humbled & grateful!

END

**Author's Note:**

> Comments very welcome! 
> 
> And come find me on Tumblr - <http://debwalsh.tumblr.com>!


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